We, along with the other maritime residents of Dover woke to a perfect morning with a light northerly breeze. Not surprisingly then our departure toward Cap Gris Nez was far from unique later that morning. Notable among the myriad of other craft was the square-rigger, the Grand Turk escorting no less 20 Chinese swimmers and also a real Venetian gondola, which was "gondoling" across to Calais. We had a comfortable reach all the way across to Bolougne courtesy of a deliciously cooling breeze on this very hot day.

Arriving in Bolougne at 4pm we were third yacht in the raft, only an hour later there were 13 boats on the raft, most of them Dutch. A stroll into the town and a beer, confirmed the start of the holiday. Our decadence continued the next day with beautiful but very hot weather. After trip to the supermarket to top up with wine and beer we were fully enjoying the luxury of on-board shower, cold fridge and strategically located cooling fans.

Taking advantage of the tide south from Bolougne together with the northerly breeze allowed a genniker reach to the Somme estuary. The entrance to St Valery is well buoyed but we were fooled a bit by the cardinal mark, which actually is within the Le Crotoy channel. If you are going to St Valery you should not go right up to the cardinal, but turn to starboard well before. The harbour master is very accommodating and efficient issuing berth numbers and keys, he even sent one of his assistants down to welcome us into the berth.

The Ramparts in the old town provide fine views over the broad estuary and it is not that hard to imagine William the Conqueror setting off from here over 900 years ago on his way to conquer England. St Valery is also one of the apparently numerous places in this part of France where Joan of Arc is reputed to have been imprisoned.

There is a steam train, with open ended "Wild West" type carriages that runs around the bay of the Somme to Le Crotoy, giving wide panoramic views of the estuary and the marshy farmlands. We had toyed with the idea of visiting and drying out within Le Crotoy but having seen the harbour we decided it is strictly for locals.

The sands of the Somme provide literally mile after mile of perfect for golden sand. We chose to take the dinghy down on the ebb tide from the marina to spend the afternoon reading and sunbathing and walking on the sand. The dinghy upended made the perfect sunscreen, before returning on the first of the young flood.

A severe thunder storm at the mouth of the Somme while making passage to Dieppe indicated that the run of amazing hot weather was over. The visibility was down to just a few hundred metres and we used the Radar to track the storm and hopefully avoid the worst of the rain. The wind remained north however so we had a good passage to Dieppe. When we arrived at the harbour we rafted up next to a Dutchman, and then another thunderstorm came along. It rained on and off most of the evening when there was a slight lull we took the opportunity to wander round the wet city.

From Dieppe we took the train to Rouen, which is where Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake in the Grande Marche. Nowadays it is full of pavement cafes and a very modernistic church in memory of Maid of Orlean. Behind one of gift shops in the Grande Marche is the museum of Joan of Arc. Although the entrance seemed like a load of old books and photos however in the mediaeval vaults there were wax models of the major scenes of Joan's life with commentary in English which proved quite interesting

The weather systems had now reversed, with our fair northerly breezes replaced with hard edged and wet South Westerlies. After leaving Dieppe we had the wind and tide against us all the way to St Valery en Caux requiring more motor-sailing then we would like. On arrival we found the bilge's overflowing with water. The taste test quickly confirmed this was not serious. However even after a thorough investigation of the complete fresh water system, which involved practically taking the boat to pieces it was impossible to find the source of the leak. After a call to the UK importers the diagnosis was made as a faulty pressure relief value on the hot water tank compounded by the lengthy motor sail. The solution for the rest of the holiday was to minimise use of the engine, and when motoring to turn off the freshwater pressure pump and regularly check the bilge!

The long forecasted bad weather hadn't appeared so a dash to Fecamp seemed feasible. For the first few miles this appeared quite practical in around 16 knots of true wind albeit from dead ahead. However within an hour the true wind steadily rose to about 30 knots and gusting to around 35. As we were making so little progress and the seas were building we decided to return to St. Valery while there remained sufficient height of tide. Seas in the entrance were quite confused and no doubt it would have been really unpleasant at Fecamp had we persevered.

We remained in St Valery for a further day whilst the harbourmaster kept the lock gates shut throughout because there was so much swell and surf in the outer harbour. Aspirations of going further West were abandoned in favour of taking advantage of the strong South westerlies to get back up to the East Coast and home.

We left the harbour in a flotilla of Dutch yachts who had also been harbour bound. The Dutch yachtsmen always appear to be incredibly competent, so we were rather surprised when our neighbour almost hit us as he moved out of his berth, he went onto hit a pontoon and another Dutch boat, before finally ramming a big old French sailing vessel. We and his countrymen decided to give him plenty of space until the chaos subsided.

We had a lumpy but uneventful run back to Dieppe in steady winds of about 20 knots, but confused seas. Found the harbour once again rather jammed up with many Dutch and British yachts who like us were bound toward the Straights. We decided to tie up to a rather scruffy French boat which was on an hammerhead end finger. This was a mistake, a large Frenchman clad only in very skimpy underpants emerged and evidently wasn't happy for us to stay. Short of alternatives we started an unofficial raft near the "Peche promenades" along with a cheeky, but charming Dutchman who persuaded the young female harbourmaster to allow us to stay. Life felt much better after a platter of Fruit de Mer and copious chilled white wine.

Ramsgate was in full swing on our arrival, due both to the start of Ramsgate week and a continuing force six. There were no berths in the new western marina, so had to go into the Eastern marina which was very exposed and very difficult to sleep as the boats spent the whole night rolling.

On washing the Serendib down we found that we had unknowingly allowed a stowaway aboard. However the poor little whitebait had expired so felt we did not need to report the unauthorised entry.